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Friday, 20 June 2014

Running for Thirsty Elephants

The unthinkable has happened! A couple of weeks ago I became an Old Aged Pensioner (minus the benefits).
So, to celebrate, challenge and defy my descent
into decrepitude, I’m going to run the Victoria Falls Half Marathon on
June 29th. And by doing so, I’m hoping to raise some money for the
wonderful Friends of Hwange Trust who have been fuelling and
maintaining ten major waterholes in the Hwange National Park since 2005.

We visited the park during the horrendous droughts of 2012 and 2013,
and saw wave upon wave of desperate elephants come running down to drink
at Nyamandlovu pan. Animals were forced to range for miles away from
water in search of food. Hundreds died, and had it not been for the
crucial work of the Trust and some private concession holders, there
would have been many, many more casualties.

Hwange is our flagship national park but like everything connected with wildlife in this country, its survival is down to private individuals, like the members of the Trust, who dedicate themselves to the job for no reward. These people are 100% trustworthy, and all their work is entirely funded by donations. As they say on their website < http://www.friendsofhwange.org/:
"Fancy buying a couple of drinks? A donation of just US$10 is enough
money to provide water for 250 elephants for one day. It is estimated
that there are around 40 000 elephants in Hwange as well as millions of
smaller animals. Every donation helps to prevent animal suffering."

If you can help, please take the details from their website and send me a message so that I can acknowledge. $10 is all we need... Thank you so much!

PS I took up running a couple of years ago - and at first I didn't think I'd get past a couple of kilometres without falling over. But I gradually improved, and although I find it a pretty hard slog most of the time, the benefits are very real. Apart from feeling great and far stronger, there's that post-run high to look forward to and the sense of achievement when you've given it your all. I told Rich that I was running away from old age, to which he replied (mournfully): "or else you're running towards it". You can tell whose glass is half-empty!